


In the Stands

by Stariceling



Category: Airmaster
Genre: Body Image, Character Study, Gen, Olympics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-20
Updated: 2012-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-06 04:12:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stariceling/pseuds/Stariceling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maki loved gymnastics more than anything, but she has never reached her own Olympic dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Stands

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the first contest over at YouFanfiction, before the site died.
> 
> Note: Risa Sugawara was of the members of Japan’s gymnastics team in 1996 (the year before the manga first came out). Maki is over a foot taller than Ms. Sugawara.

Maki hadn’t been up in the stands for years. Not since she was old enough to be down there where she belonged. Even before that she had always been with her mother, her coach.

Now she sat up in the stands beside her friends, looking down at the young women striving for their places on the Olympic team. From here the world didn’t narrow down into one focused point. She was only hemmed in by the claustrophobia of people packed close around her. The voices, the cheers hovering in the air, weighed her down. She couldn’t fly here. She couldn’t even move.

Watching a perfectly executed tumbling pass by the girl on the floor below, an old acquaintance somehow infinitely more powerful and polished for the difference in time, Maki suddenly missed the buoying feeling of the spring floor. It wasn’t until her feet started to ache at the sullen solidness of concrete that she realized she was standing.

She was distantly aware of Miori and Renge falling silent, of the sound of Mina’s concerned voice filling the gap, but she waved their worries aside without thinking. She only needed a minute.

There was a time when the narrow confines of the balance beam had seemed more than enough for precisely placed feet. Maki wouldn’t let herself waver now.

She only needed a minute to get away, to clear her head of this incapacitating clamor. If she had ever stopped to think that far ahead she might have guessed that an Olympic dream would be out of reach. Four years ago she was too young, and now she was too tall. The dream was over before she had so much as imagined it.

Four years ago she had been awed just to watch the women a few years above her set out for the Olympics, and maybe for just a second she had thought. . . but her mother had always wanted her to focus on each day, each competition, each routine as it happened. The dream didn’t stretch out any farther than that. She should be glad now that it didn’t, because she had loved every single moment as she lived it. She shouldn’t feel that she had missed something.

Someone was calling her, and without meaning to Maki moved all the way down to the front row of the stands, where a heavy railing separated the spectators from the gymnasts and their coaches.

Risa Sugawara was standing below the railing, beautiful in blue. She seemed so far below, too tiny to even reach the railing from where she stood. Maki had to kneel and stretch down to clasp the hand offered up to her, feeling smooth callouses and stray chalk dust on those strong fingers.

They were a world apart. Even a fool would have to pick Risa for the Olympic team. She was elegance and energy in a lithe, compact body. If there was an ideal, it had to be the deceptively petite athlete before her.

“I’m glad to see you here,” Risa greeted her. “Oh, are these your friends?”

It wasn’t until she mentioned them that Maki even noticed she was surrounded. The other girls had followed to form a loose bunch around her, as if they might need to move to support her.

“Yes,” Maki answered. Friends who hadn’t known her back then, but somehow still loved her now.

“Maki likes gymnastics, so we thought she should get to see the trials,” Michiru explained.

Risa smiled at that. “You should have seen her competing. When she hit the vault it was like she didn’t want to come back down.” There was no malice in the use of past tense. Risa understood, just as well as any of them must have understood, what a short and unpredictable time stretched out before retirement.

Maki wanted to offer Risa a wish of good luck as all of her friends did, but the words wouldn’t come. Risa already had luck to be born in the right year, to be here at the right time. Everything past this hinged on strength and conviction, and Risa would never sit back and trust a mere wish to get her through.

Standing, Maki had to steady herself on the railing. Risa turned back to the world where she belonged to prepare for her next event.

“Come on, let’s get back to our seats. It’s not over.”

Yuu’s hand was on her arm, but the touch wasn’t necessary. She was already grounded.

The rail in her hand was rough with worn paint and rust, a world away from the smooth familiarity of the uneven bars. It wouldn’t flex with her weight, nor could it move her. It was only a fence to shut her out.

‘It’s not over.’

Yes, it was.


End file.
